.TH SD 4
.SH NAME
sd, st, sg \- SCSI hard disk / tape / generic
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR sd* ,
.BR st* ,
.B sg*
family of devices refer to the SCSI hard disk, tape and generic driver using
the Adaptec 154x series of controllers.  This manual page only describes the
differences between the sd and hd devices, read
.BR hd (4)
first.
.PP
The devices numbers of the SCSI devices are statically mapped onto the SCSI
targets 0 to 7.  This is done like the hd devices with
.B sd[0\-4]
referring to target 0,
.B sd[5\-9]
to target 1, etc.  The logical unit number is always 0, because devices with
more than one logical unit are virtually extinct.  The mapping may be changed
from the boot environment however (see
.BR boot (8)).
.PP
Tapes start at minor device 64, with
.B nrst0
at minor 64,
.B rst0
at 65,
.B nrst1
at 66, etc.  The mapping is again static to target (minor \- 64) / 2.  The
.B rst
devices rewind the tape on close, the
.B nrst
devices do not.  See
.BR mt (1),
and
.BR mtio (4)
for a description of the commands that may be sent to the tape, either from
the command prompt or from a program.
.PP
Through the eight raw generic devices
.B rsg[0\-7]
starting at minor 120, one can send SCSI commands to any SCSI device
from user mode.  (Minix-vmd only.)
.PP
The driver returns a drive geometry of 64 heads by 32 sectors per track for
small disks with the DIOCGETP ioctl.  For large disks 255x63 is returned.
The size in sectors is usually larger than
the largest cylinder number indicates, because the disk is not likely to
exactly match that faked geometry.  Note that DOS may not be able to access
those last few sectors.
.SS Disk like devices.
Removable disks (floppies), CD-ROM's and WORM disks may also be accessed
through the
.B sd
devices.  One is not allowed to write a WORM disk however, because it is
likely to be taken from an alien operating system, so it seems safer to not
allow Minix to stomp over it.  One usually needs special O.S. support to
keep one from writing to the same block twice.
.PP
The
.B DIOCEJECT
ioctl ejects CD-ROMs, floppies, etc.  (See
.BR eject (1).)
A fixed disk spins down if it supports the stop command.
.SS SCSI Tapes
There are two types of SCSI tapes drives supported by the driver: fixed or
variable block size tape drives.  Examples of the first kind are cartridge
tapes, with a fixed 512 bytes block size.  An Exabyte tape drive has a
variable block size, with a minimum of 1 byte and a maximum of 245760 bytes
(see the documentation of such devices.)
The maximum is truncated to 32767 bytes for Minix-86 and 61440 bytes for
Minix-vmd, because the driver can't move more bytes in a single request.
.PP
A read or write to a fixed block size tape must be a precise multiple of the
block size, any other count gives results in an I/O error.  A read from a
variable block sized tape must be large enough to accept the block that is
read, otherwise an I/O error will be returned.  A write can be any size
above the minimum, creating a block of that size.  If the write count is
larger than the maximum block size then more blocks are written until the
count becomes zero.  The last block must be larger than the minimum of
course.  (This minimum is often as small as 1 byte, as for the Exabyte.)
.PP
The
.B mt blksize
command may be used to select a fixed block size for a variable block sized
tape.  This will speed up I/O considerably for small block sizes.  (Some
systems can only use fixed mode and will write an Exabyte tape with 1024
byte blocks, which read very slow in variable mode.)
.PP
A tape is a sequence of blocks and filemarks.  A tape may be opened and
blocks may be read from it upto a filemark, after that all further reads
return 0.  After the tape is closed and reopened one can read the blocks
following the filemark if using a non-rewinding device.  This makes the tape
look like a sequence of files.
.PP
If a tape has been written to or opened in write-only mode, then a filemark
is written if the tape is closed or if a space command is issued.  No extra
filemark is written if the drive is instructed to write filemarks.
.SS Raw Generic Devices
Under Minix-vmd one can use the generic SCSI devices to program a SCSI
device entirely from user mode.  The disk and tape devices probe for devices
when opened, start disks and load tapes, but the generic devices do nothing
of this.  Given an open file descriptor to any SCSI character device (not
just the generic devices) one can use the following ioctl:
.PP
.RS
ioctl(fd, SCIOCCMD, &scsicmd)
.RE
.PP
The structure whose address is passed as the third argument is defined
in <sys/scsi.h> as follows:
.PP
.RS
.nf
struct scsicmd {
	void	*cmd;
	size_t	cmdlen;
	void	*buf;
	size_t	buflen;
	void	*sense;
	size_t	senselen;
	int	dir;
};
.fi
.RE
.PP
.B Cmd
and
.B cmdlen
hold the address and length of an object holding a Group 0 or Group 1
SCSI command.  The next two fields describe a buffer of at most 8 kilobytes
used in the data in or out phase.
.B Dir
is 0 if data is to be read from the device, 1 if data is written to the
device.  If the ioctl succeeds then 0 is returned, otherwise -1 with
.B errno
set to
.B EIO
and the request sense info returned in the buffer described by the sense and
senselen fields.  If the sense key is zero on error then a host adapter
error occurred, this means that the device is most likely turned off or not
present.
.SH FILES
.TP 40
/dev/sd[0\-9], /dev/sd[1\-46\-9][a\-d]
Usual disk devices.
.TP
/dev/rst4, /dev/nrst4
Usual tape device.
.TP
/dev/rsg[0\-7]
Raw generic devices.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR hd (4),
.BR mt (1),
.BR eject (1),
.BR mtio (4),
.BR dd (1).
.SH AUTHOR
Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)